This was a neat one! The concept is especially intriguing, and I like the presentation as a more classic text-based dungeon crawler. I maybe would have liked the effects to be a bit less strong, as it did make the text a little more difficult to read, which of course makes the whole experience a little rougher in this case. I enjoyed the writing, but I found the creature killing mechanics to get in the way more than anything. It felt mostly like it was there to kill me once or twice before I understood the controls, and then after that to just make things take longer as it pulled me away from reading the text, but it didn't provide much in the way of challenge or variety. I really just wanted to read the text, which felt like the actual meat of the game, but the creatures just made me want to rush through and I ended up skimming a lot more than I would've liked. The text and storytelling are strong, so I don't think you should shy away from just leaning on that more wholeheartedly!
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Thoughtful and trenchant critiques, and definitely gets to the crux of what the fundamental mechanic is attempting! We certainly wanted to fine-tune certain elements of the "combat," and there are a few things I've already thought about to shift the experience towards "tense" and away from "tiresome." But this kind of feedback really does help guide our thinking in making our games as engaging as possible. Thank you for this!